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Solyndra’s Legal Team Pours It On as Political Spotlight Burns

By

Peg Brickley

Oct 18, 2012 4:17 pm ET

As if bankruptcy itself were not tough enough, Solyndra had the ill fortune to sink with $527 million of taxpayer loans and a private equity owner with links to President Barack Obama just when presidential campaign politics began to heat up.

Cue the surprise raid by the Federal Bureau of Investigation on corporate headquarters—a surprise to Solyndra, though the local TV news operation had a crew on the scene. Send in the irate Republican lawmakers to demand answers, fling subpoenas at the White House. Circulate the rumors of brewing criminal charges, stir up an aura of notoriety and get Solyndra’s name on the lips of the pundits.

All of this was happening while Solyndra was looking for a buyer to revive its manufacturing operations at a time when the U.S. solar-power industry had become strictly a buyer’s market, thanks to intense competition from price-chopping rivals in China.